About Real English School

The founder Mr. Abdul Sattar Sainuddin describes the history of Real English School: One of my ambitions was to found and run an educational institution with all types of trainings. In nineteen ninety, I took a decision to start a school. I started a pre-primary school in Baleshwar village of Surat district. After ample of advertisements and door to door marketing, I could get only two students- one was my own daughter! Villagers were not interested in sending their kids to English medium school. My friends dissuaded me from the so-called foolishness. I did not yield to their dissuasions. I shifted the venue of the school to the sub-district headquarters, Palsana and used all possible means of advertisements and door to door marketing, but failed to get any student on the opening day. It was a day someone else in my place would have committed suicide!

A Brief History

Despite dissuasions by many, I gave one more ad showing the opening of school fifteen days thence, and did rigorous marketing. At last, I got one admission on the 15th of June, 1991; by the end of June, the strength became three. I continued rigorous marketing and the strength increased to 11. By this time, all the money that I had got over! The total income from school was just 500 rupees per month and the expenditure more than six thousand a month. Lack of fund and more expenditure forced me to start Spoken English Classes.

I conducted classes till 11:00 pm in different places for meeting the expenses. Still, fund was not sufficient for food. I met all the expenses of school but failed to get for my family any nutritious food for many months. However, none could dissuade me from running the Real English School. Then I started another pre-primary school at village Vesma in June 1991. After hard and rigorous campaign, I got 28 students in total. Work load increased. So did expenditure. I could everything else properly by working from six in the morning till eleven at night. In 1992, I formed a society with my friends and got it registered under the name “Unity Education and Propagation Society” in order to meet the legal requirement for school registration.

On 4th December, 1992, I got permission to run primary section from June, 1993.Room rent, salaries and other expenses were more than fee collections, and so, I had to do extra works to meet the expenses. I gave importance to really real English medium education as the name suggested, value education, different types of trainings, co-curricular education etc I wanted to start computer education from standard one itself, went to Mumbai and got some books. As no computer teacher was available, I started learning and teaching together, thereby Real English School becoming the first known school to start computer education from standard One in 1993. I used mirrors for observation and controlled classes, students and staff.

Slowly, as years passed, the total student strength increased to 197 by the year 1998. Now the time has come to vacate the rental building, and I started searching for land. I called for a parents’ meeting, and the meeting recommended to purchase land near Maroli crossroads as it comes in the centre of all villages, and as the majority of students were coming from Maroli area. None of my friends helped me as they were persuading me to stop the loss-making school. Parents too kept themselves away. However, the society meeting authorized me to do whatever was necessary to run the school.

I borrowed money and purchased some land for school building, started construction work, and borrowings continued. In the year 2000, not only the school was shifted to the new building with permission from Education Department, but permission was obtained for starting secondary section too. By now, I became a good borrower. I managed to have CCTV cameras and talk back systems in all rooms in place of mirrors, website of school giving information of school and results of students from Nursery and KG to Secondary section and computers with colour monitors. After appointing Academic Principal and head teachers, I renamed my post as Managing Principal and remained always in school managing, training teachers and students, monitoring, auditing, measuring and improving all processes.

From August 2000, I started all types of trainings which were useful in an situation in life, such as road-safety training, crisis management, disaster management, fire-fighting, saving others if electrocuted, electric safety measures, fire safety measures, self defense in case of terrorist attack; for all these I was the instructor and trainer. On 26th January, 2001, while cultural program was going on, the devastating Gujarat earth quake took place killing tens of thousands and causing many other hardships to people of Gujarat.

As buildings and trees were shaking, I ran into the school building and shouted students, who were dressing up and helping for different items, to evacuate the building and took them to a safe place where any building or live electric wire would not fall on them. That experience inspired me to begin earth-quake evacuation training. I was always conscious about Environment, and did whatever possible to preserve and save environment, trained teachers and students how to preserve environment, taught them how they could contribute to reduce pollutions of land, earth and water and how to reduce use of water, electricity and papers. Use of plastic was discouraged and trained students how to dispose plastics.

I made different departments with a teacher as head for each. The departments were named: academic activity department, co-curricula activity department, environment department, safety department and health department, prepared rules, regulations and work instructions for each department and its activities and gave trainings to all department for various activities they have to perform, different trainings they have to conduct, and how to record all reports on activities and trainings, and started conducting audits of all departments and advised them what to do. I then labeled all files and documents, gave names and numbers and made list for easy retrieval. Many parents, teachers and people appreciated my works and the progress of school and students.

On a cold day in December one man visited Real English School and asked me how I was running the school. On hearing how I was managing school by making different departments, rules, regulations, work instructions, records and documents, he remarked his wonder as to how a single person could do all those things without any help from outside and consultations, and suggested that the school could get ISO: 9001:2000 certification for the beautiful and unique work. When I showed my willingness to go for certification process, he promised to bring me a consultant. It was a pleasant surprise to the ISO consultant to see everything I was doing was conforming to ISO standards. It didn’t take too long, and Real English School became the first ISO certified school in rural areas in India on May 31/05/2003. Many TV channels and print media reported the news.

Real English School was unknowingly following all international standards, when documented and registered, it was recommended for ISO: 14001 and OHSAS: 18000 certifications. And, Real English School became world’s first ever IMS certified school conforming to all three standards, namely, ISO: 9001: 2000, ISO: 14001: 2004 and OHSAS: 18000: 1999/IS: 18001:2004 on 5th May, 2005. Meanwhile the results of International Assessment conducted by New South University too came putting Real English School at the topmost position among all Indian schools with 15 gold medals. The following three years too Real English School retained the No. I position winning 7 gold medals in 2005, 27 gold medals in 2006 and 18 gold medals in 2007. Now this school has nearly 800 students and this year boarding facility has also been started. Among other achievements of Real English School are the many gold, silver and bronze medals in martial arts, cancer and aids awareness programs and some sport activities.